I told myself I simply couldn’t wait as long as I sometimes do to publish a wrap up post. I know how much some of you hate that. But I also knew that we were going to hit the ground running when we returned home…and we did. But today is the holiday, I have no appointments, and all that was on the agenda was the neighborhood celebration earlier today and fireworks viewing from the deck tonight. It’s time to wrap this up!
I’d like to say we had an uneventful trip home, and in most ways we did. We went to Botticelli for breakfast before 6:30am, enjoyed one last meal being served by the delightful Marco, and were out of our cabin at 8am. We then waited in the Elite disembarkation lounge (SRO only for a while) until our number was called early, about 8:40am.
Re-entering the US was easy (facial recognition was in place) and I thought we’d have plenty of time to claim our luggage and meet up with the Lyft I’d reserved for 10am. We would have…if my suitcase hadn’t been mis-sorted and was in a different part of the terminal. We each walked and walked and walked around trying to find it. I have placed bright yellow and black striped duct tape all over our suitcases. They’re pretty hard to miss, and often the handlers actually place them side by side in the terminal. Not so that day.
Finally they announced that all the luggage had been offloaded from the ship (kind of like the airport conveyer coming to a stop at baggage claim) and things were looking a little desperate. It was 9:50am and our Lyft driver was on the way. But, fortunately, enough luggage had been claimed and my lone suitcase with that bright tape finally stood out. Success!
After that, things progressed like clockwork. Our flight was full but on time, and we settled in for the direct flight home. When drinks were served, I ordered fuzzy water like I always do, but the person next to me ordered a Bloody Mary, and things again got interesting.
I used to order Mr. And Mrs. T when I flew 30 years ago or so, but one time things went horribly wrong (coincidentally on a flight to San Francisco). I was dressed for the meeting I had to go to directly after landing, with my Coach purse under the seat in front of me, and the plane hit turbulence when I was taking a sip of my beverage. Tomato juice everywhere. The purse was ruined, I only had the one suit, and my white shirt was covered in red. Never again.
We didn’t even got that far on this flight. The flight attendant was handing the drink over my head when he dropped it, leaving my head covered in red, and juice running down my face, into my eyes, over my glasses and all over my shirt. I was so stunned I didn’t know what to do, and hands were coming at me from all directions dabbing me off with those tiny napkins. The FA said he’d bring me anything- ANYTHING- I needed, so I asked for a can of club soda and a stack of napkins and spent the rest of the flight trying to lessen the disaster and making little red paper pill balls from the soaked napkins.
We de-planed to a terminal that was wall to wall people, 25% of them kids and 25% of those having meltdowns, the airport looking like a movie theater after a Saturday afternoon matinee and me looking like a walking crime scene. Summer travel is a little crazy at the best of times. The bathrooms were out of paper towels, so I was as clean as I was going to get, and decided to ignore the stares.
After we claimed our luggage, I priced Uber and Lyft, and- yikes- demand pricing at its best (or worst). A normally $75 fare was over $200. We made a quick decision to take mass transit as far as we could and then do a pick up from there. It was packed, with many others in the same boat we were of deciding to take a $1.25pp ride as far as they could. Less than two hours and a $25 Uber later and we were home about 10pm.
I think I said earlier that we’ve never cruised in June before, so we were a little uncertain what we would come home to, but our neighbor mowed our front lawn to keep the HOA at bay (thank you Steve!) and everything inside the house was fine despite the heat dome we had been under and the inside of the house getting into the 90s.
I spent all day Sunday doing load after load of laundry and putting it away, but it wasn’t until last night that I completely finished unpacking by putting away jewelry and toiletries and washing out refillable travel containers. It’s a good feeling to have it done.
G spent the week getting the yard caught up in the heat and cleaning the deck for the holiday weekend while I went to five appointments, got $200 of groceries in the house and collected the stack of mail. Next week will be busy, but not quite as much, and the week after that will hopefully be a lot slower so I can get the house ready for my surgery. We definitely know how to best do that by now.
We’ve talked a dozen times about our cruise and how much we loved it. That itinerary was just amazing, and Endicott Arm and Dawes Glacier were the surprise hits of the trip. We enjoyed the endless days, the entertainment, shows and live music alike, the crew, the extra MTG event we had, seeing Captain Fortezze for the first time in nine years and the layout of Ruby Princess. I would choose a Grand Class ship over a Royal Class ship every time for Alaska.
We found the ship in general to be in great repair, wondered a bit at some of the highly expensive ADA accommodations that were installed since we were last on her, and found things like public bathrooms and hand sinks to be in very good working order. In our cabin, cabinet drawers all worked fine, and, after our first bathroom leak, we had no more issues. As I’ve said, the mattresses were really awful (but, luckily, the chiropractor was one of my appointments this week and he worked a miracle), and I was getting fed up with the shortage of hand towels and wash cloths. Come on Princess, even Motel 6 offers a complete set of towels and better mattresses. But our steward was wonderful, and I should have spoken up about the mattress in the first few days, so I share some of the blame for that.
The food was probably my biggest gripe. Not hot, not even served safely at times…there were a few hits and lots of misses. But G gained some weight, so obviously a lot of it was edible, if not memorable.
We would take this cruise again (and again, and again) but next year isn’t going to work because of a wedding (😉) If it’s offered again in 2027, you’ll find us on the ship! As for what’s next…I’m pretty sure we’ll be cruising again after cross country season in December, and maybe even before then if I can squeeze one in between Conference, Regional and National championships (prayers are said continuously that our athlete remains healthy and un-injured for his senior year). And we do have several cruises booked for 2026, but haven’t yet settled on what we’ll be doing. Still, two months at a stretch is my absolute limit (one month is even better) so I don’t see any winters at sea in our near future.
Thank you for following along! Your emails and DMs got me over the initial hump of blogging. I had never realized how much motivation Mom provided and how it would affect me when I no longer needed to publish posts to keep her updated. It didn’t help that I couldn’t upload pics from the ship, but it brought back memories of blogging years ago in that regard. It still got done, but for $495 I might have expected more than 2013 functionality.
Have a wonderful and safe summer and check back later this year for more of the good, the bad, and the (tomato) juicy.
Life is never boring and is always good. :-)